Body

A screening test that measures whether a patient's heart is healthy enough for a kidney transplant is not as dangerous as once thought, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society Nephrology (CJASN). The findings indicate that the test, called coronary angiography, does not cause a decline in kidney function for patients with advanced chronic kidney disease (CKD) and can help determine when to schedule a patient for transplantation.

Several cell-based therapy approaches could provide new treatments for patients with Alport syndrome, reports an upcoming paper in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN). "Our study opens up many considerations of how new therapies related to the use of stem cells can be devised for our kidney patients with chronic disease," comments Raghu Kalluri, MD, PhD (Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA).

An international research team has demonstrated that treating HIV-AIDS with interleukin-2 (IL-2) is ineffective. As a result, the researchers recommend that clinical trials on this compound be stopped. Their finding was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in an article co-authored by 14 researchers, including Dr. Jean-Pierre Routy of the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC).

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A team of researchers including a University of Florida paleontologist has used a rich cache of plant fossils discovered in Colombia to provide the first reliable evidence of how Neotropical rainforests looked 58 million years ago.

Researchers from the Smithsonian Institution and UF, among others, found that many of the dominant plant families existing in today's Neotropical rainforests — including legumes, palms, avocado and banana — have maintained their ecological dominance despite major changes in South America's climate and geological structure.

PHILADELPHIA - A study published in the October issue of Nature Genetics demonstrates that loss of the tumor-suppressor protein p53, coupled with elimination of the DNA-maintenance protein ATR, severely disrupts tissue maintenance in mice. As a result, tissues deteriorate rapidly, which is generally fatal in these animals. In addition, the study provides supportive evidence for the use of inhibitors of ATR in cancer therapy.

White, Asian and Hispanic managers tend to hire more whites and fewer blacks than black managers do, according to a new study out of the University of Miami School of Business Administration.

Hamilton, ON (Oct. 14, 2009) – When people travel, bacteria and other infectious agents travel with them. As about a billion people cross international borders each year, many more billions of the bugs come along for the ride.

However, the trend is contributing to substantial domestic and international public health threats and risks, as seen with SARS and more recently with the H1N1 flu virus.

Berkeley -- While some scientists have argued that cancer is such a complex genetic disease that you'd have to sequence a person's complete genome in order to predict his or her cancer risk, a University of California, Berkeley, cell biologist suggests that the risk may be more simply determined by inexpensively culturing a few skin cells.

Even as research on the ribosome, one of the cell's most basic machines, is recognized with a Nobel Prize, scientists continue to achieve new insights on the way ribosomes work.

Ribosomes are factories inside cells where messages coming from genes are decoded and new proteins pieced together on an assembly line. For the first time, scientists have a detailed picture of the ribosome trapped together with elongation factor G (EF-G), one of the enzymes that nudges the assembly line to move forward.

The results are published in the Oct. 16 issue of Science magazine.

Our body's activity levels fall and rise to the beat of our internal drums—the 24-hour cycles that govern fundamental physiological functions, from sleeping and feeding patterns to the energy available to our cells. Whereas the master clock in the brain is set by light, the pacemakers in peripheral organs are set by food availability. The underlying molecular mechanism was unknown.

Out of the trillions of "friendly" bacteria - representing hundreds of species -that make our intestines their home, new evidence in mice suggests that it may be a very select few that shape our immune responses. The findings detailed in two October 16th reports appearing in the journals Cell and Immunity, both Cell Press publications, offer new insight into the constant dialogue that goes on between intestinal microbes and the immune system, and point to a remarkably big role for a class of microbes known as segmented filamentous bacteria (SFB).

A research team at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine has provided a surprisingly simple explanation for the mechanism and features of the "Golgi apparatus" – a structure that has baffled generations of scientists. The model developed by the UC San Diego scientists suggests that the Golgi's unusual shape is a direct consequence of the way it works. Their study will be published in the October 16 issue of the journal Cell.

Like an unusually forceful career counselor, the Id3 protein decides the fate of a given white blood cell precursor, according to researchers at Fox Chase Cancer Center. Their findings, published today in the journal Immunity, describe how Id3 directs blood cell progenitors to become gamma-delta T cells.

Gamma-delta T cells are unique in that they possess attributes of both the adaptive arm of the immune system, which is invigorated by vaccination, and the innate arm, which represents the body's first line of defense against infections.

AUSTIN, Texas–By discovering the atomic structure of a key human enzyme, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have pointed the way toward designing anti-HIV drugs with far less toxic side effects.

Their work was published this week in Cell.

"Many anti-HIV drugs are designed to stop the process of DNA replication," says Dr. Whitney Yin, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry. "That turns out to be a great thing to do to help cure virus infections, because it stop the processes of viral replication.

A genetic mutation found in four children born with multiple abnormalities may provide insight into potential treatments for newborn lung distress and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

The children were born with abnormally developed lungs, gastrointestinal and urinary systems, skin, skull, bones and muscles. In addition, all had cutis laxa, an inherited connective tissue disorder that causes skin to hang loosely from the body. Three of the patients died from respiratory failure before age 2.